


Home

by afleetoffoxes



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: All of these are very light mentions, Could be seen as shippy near the end, Epsilon says he's sorry, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Mental Trauma, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Pre-Season 13, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:57:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7598980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afleetoffoxes/pseuds/afleetoffoxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epsilon had been avoiding Wash. He hated saying he was sorry almost as much as he hated saying goodbye.</p><p>-</p><p>In which Epsilon and Wash talk about their shared history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old one-shot that I'd posted on tumblr under my old account back in the first couple of episodes of Season 13 that takes place between Season's 12 and 13. Re-posting it here because this is were you can find all of my old stuff now.
> 
> It never had a name on tumblr so I've simply called it 'Home'. Sorry if it seems a little dated. It's an older work. This can be seen as shippy near the end because there's actually a continuation of this fic that hasn't been posted yet.
> 
> If you haven't read it before, I do hope you like it. Feel free to pop by my tumblr [AlopexTheFox](http://alopexthefox.tumblr.com) and leave me a prompt or request. Enjoy my lovelies <3

Epsilon had been avoiding Wash. While it might not have seemed like he was going out of his way, he definitely was. Carolina had told him to transfer himself into Wash’s head before combat once. Neither the Freelancer nor the AI took it very well. Tucker, the only other person’s head Epsilon was comfortable entering besides Carolina, also tried. It had ended equally as bad. He knew he was being a dick about it but, really, wasn’t that what all of the Leonard Church’s did? Be emotionally stunted dicks? Sure seemed like it.

“Wash,” Carolina said, her voice tired from the argument they’d already had countless times. Well, Epsilon could count them. This was the seventh. “ _Please_ , just take Epsilon, bring him to the terminal and let him do his work.”

“That’s not gonna work,” Epsilon mumbled, knowing that only Carolina would hear him. The woman huffed and rolled her eyes and the AI knew it was directed at him - he didn’t need to know her every thought for that.

“You can do it,” Wash countered, shifting his weight in that nervous way he did. “I’ll take point. I can hold off the space pirates,” he insisted and Epsilon smiled weakly at Carolina’s thought that Wash was acting like a whiny child.

Carolina growled lowly and pulled a storage drive out, holding it loosely in her hand. Taking the cue, Epsilon hopped out of Carolina’s implant and into the storage device. He didn’t like traveling that way, if he was honest. It was small, cramped, and he had so much space inside someone’s mind. The brain had no limits, could contain infinite amounts of information. And maybe it made him feel a little more human, being so in-sync with one.

“Take him. You’ll have to find another drive in there for him to copy the data. It won’t all fit on there with him,” the teal Freelancer explained and normally Epsilon would have made a joke, asked if she was calling him fat perhaps, but he didn’t feel like it at the moment. His non-existent gut was too twisted with a ghost of an emotion. Were he human, he would have called it guilt.

Wash accepted the drive, cradling it carefully in his gloved hands and it only made the AI feel worse. They headed into the building, guided by Epsilon’s acquired blueprints of the facility.

“It’s just there. Connect me to that terminal and start looking for a drive. Should be something around here,” Epsilon mumbled, just looking forward to getting shit done so he could go back to Carolina.

Wash hesitated for a moment and the AI made a disgruntled noise, focusing so he could jump to the port on his own. The terminal came to life, quickly unlocking as Epsilon punched through its security systems. It was all child’s play at that point for him. He’d learned to be a computer instead of a human though he still clung to the feeling of humanity with a death grip. Now he was stronger and faster and able to take on the more complicated systems. He quickly found what he was looking for, along with a few other tidbits he thought would be useful, and started preparing it to move onto the drive that Wash _still_ hadn’t put into the port.

“Wash, I need the-“ Epsilon started but he was cut off by a hurried voice.

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, the AI was stunned into silence and that was saying something with how quickly he could process information. But this – this declaration? He didn’t know what to do with that. “What?”

For his part, the former Freelancer seemed to be embarrassed by his statement if the way Epsilon could read his body language was anything to go by. Wash shuffled his feet and gave the drive in his hand a gentle caress that only threw Epsilon further for a loop. “Epsilon. You were my AI,” was all the man said.

“ _Stop_ ,” the fragment snapped, shifting through the terminal to see if he could find some sort of storage device on his own. For anything, really, to get him out of that situation. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“I know we don’t but,” Wash pressed, moving closer to the terminal that Epsilon was buried in, “We’ve been avoiding it and I feel like this is something I need to say.”

Epsilon’s patience snapped and he let his hologram project on the terminal so that he could at least _feel_ like he was staring the Freelancer down. “You feel like you need to apologize?” he snapped, feeling a twinge of joy as the soldier twitch 0.375 centimeters in surprise. “What the fuck is that about? You’re not the one who wanted to fucking _die_ , Washington. You didn’t try to _kill yourself_ inside someone else’s head. That was me, I know that,” Epsilon snarled, feeling just so angry and sad that he worried for a brief flicker if Omega would try and take over. He tried to reign in his emotions, forcing the anger back down into his very core until Omega was just a memory of a memory. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

Wash was shocked, watching, waiting for Epsilon’s anger to grow because, he knew, there was no anger like a Church’s anger. The former Freelancer was actually surprised to see that anger held back. “Epsilon,” he said so softly that it made the AI cringe, “I am so sorry for what they did to you and to Alpha. You didn’t deserve that. I _saw_ what they did to you. I saw everything.”

Epsilon knew this. He remembered waking up in that unit, being scared and hurt with the memory of the torture burning inside his tiny fragmented form. The moment that he’d been implanted into Washington was like a wave of heavy relief, so strong and powerful that it nearly drowned him. He remembered feeling the need to tell someone – no, not someone, Wash – what had happened to him. He’d spilled everything into the human’s waiting mind and, in the retelling of his horrors, he realized he didn’t want to exist. He’d tried deconstructing himself while he was linked with his host’s mind, not realizing that it would affect Wash. Their thoughts had been one in that moment of disorientation and Epsilon had foolishly thought that Wash’s pained screams were his own. They’d both blacked out before Epsilon could do any permanent damage to either of them but they were both mentally scarred by the experience - though the AI didn’t learn of Wash’s anguish until later. After they’d ripped him from the human mind, Epsilon remembered sifting through his memories trying to remember where the warm voice that had blended with his own thoughts had gone and when it would be returning. 

He’d waited for Wash, yearned for the warmth of his mind, the humor and _goodness_ of his human host, though he never returned. He knew why, of course. He’d separated their thoughts in his memory and he could see then the horrendous pain he’d put Wash through - that he’d made him suffer the same torture that he and the Alpha had. No, he didn’t expect Wash to return for him and free him from the cold storage facility he’d been sealed inside. In the years that he’d been locked away – oh and how those years stretched when you were a computer program, watching every second as though it were minutes – he’d comforted himself with the memories of David Washington. (He knew that Washington wasn’t David’s last name but he also knew that the man despised his last name and actually preferred the name that had been given to him) When he’d entered the mind of the Freelancer, Wash’s memories of his life had flooded into Epsilon’s own mind though he was too terrified and excited to have someone to talk to that he didn’t delve into the human’s memories. Trying to disassemble himself had caused his own memories to warp and fade and Epsilon had a hard time recalling them but, trapped in the storage facility, waiting for someone to set him free, he found he could remember Washington perfectly. He knew that the man was from a small colony, that he didn’t speak to his parents anymore, that he’d been bullied in school and had wet the bed as a child. He knew that the man could eat like a horse and loved cats and was easily the luckiest man in the world for how he seemed to _survive_ the way no one else could. He also knew that Wash would never return for him.

Until he did.

He’d known the voice the instant he heard it though it was older and seemed much more tired. But it had been _Wash_. He’d been talking to someone else, someone he’d later realized had been the Alpha, but he’d been too happy to hear the voice he’d missed so much. But Wash had been so different than the warm, goofy person in the memories he’d lived in over the years. He’d been cold and angry and had called Epsilon ‘it’. The AI had tried to reach out to Washington, to speak to him, show him who he was, but he’d only been able to reach the Alpha.

When they’d met later, Epsilon’s memories of himself and Washington had been so damaged and he hadn’t known how to feel about his former host. But then he remembered everything and, well, he hated to say that he’d been a little afraid of Agent Washington. Wash was sure to remember all of the pain and misery the AI had put him through and surely he’d held a grudge. He’d only had brief interactions with the man but they’d all been fairly tense and Wash had never once invited Epsilon back into his head. Probably because he didn’t want more pain.

He didn’t deserve more pain.

Epsilon had taken someone so pure and kindhearted and had broke him, damaged him, turned him into the cynical, bitter creature before him. Wash had healed, yes, he’d recovered from the deteriorating mental state that Epsilon had left him in and was even starting to act a bit more like his normal, goofy self but he knew that it had been Tucker, Caboose, and the Reds that had brought out that side of Wash. Not Epsilon. No. Not him.

“Epsilon,” Wash called and the AI realized in the back of his mind that Wash had said his name before. “Please, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was my fault,” Epsilon tried to bark back but it came out sounding like a broken sob. “I hurt you so much. I didn’t even know what I was doing to you but I did it, Washington. I would’ve torn your mind to shreds if I’d succeeded.”

“But you didn’t,” Wash insisted, crouching just a bit so he was closer to the holographic projection. “You’re still here. You survived. You were so desperate to escape the pain – I remember. You were such a small voice, you sounded so scared and I knew why. You were just looking for companionship, someone to help you from your memories of Alpha, and I let them take you away,” the man paused and took a heavy breath like he was trying to calm himself. “I was so worried about you after they took you away, Epsilon. I knew what they’d done to Alpha and I was so scared that they’d do it to you. I asked for you back but they… They told me they’d destroyed you. I was so angry…” Wash trailed off, his voice shaking and Epsilon wish that he had a physical body so that he could reassure the man with a touch, something, anything, to console this man. This man who had been worried about him, afraid for him. “Things happened, Epsilon. Over the years, I became so bitter and angry that, when I found you again, I couldn’t even be happy. I’m sorry for how I treated you, like you were just an object. You’re so much more than that. You are so strong and you are amazing. You’ve done so much good for someone who was born from so much bad.”

Epsilon didn’t know what to say. He had no words for the way that Wash’s words made him feel. It was empowering and humbling and grounding and Epsilon wanted to be that image that Wash saw. “I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done to you, Wash. And… Thank you,” Epsilon said finally.

Wash looked… lighter as he returned to his full height and Epsilon thought, maybe, he’d seem a smile behind the man’s visor. “We should get out of here,” he said, finally plugging in the drive and Epsilon started adding the files as quickly as the physical media would allow.

“You’re the one who wanted to talk about feelings mid-mission,” Epsilon grumbled though he knew he sounded far too happy to offend. The terminal beeped signaling the data transfer was complete and Epsilon watched as the Freelancer extracted the drive. “You never did find a way to carry me. I’ll have to travel through their system until I can get close enough to Carolina to jump to her implant and-“

“Epsilon?” Wash murmured gently, crouching down to the AI’s hologram height. “My implant space is open.” There was no uncertainty in his voice, nothing to tell Epsilon whether he was joking or not.

“You don’t allow AI implantation since…”

“No, I don’t. I was always afraid another AI would see everything that you showed me. But, you know me. I have nothing to hide from you,” Wash told him simply and Epsilon took a deep breath that he didn’t need, just to ground himself before he jumped.

Returning to Wash’s head felt like returning home. Sure, it wasn’t perfect; there had been some damage done, some repairs made but it was filled with old memories that welcomed Epsilon like a warm blanket and a cup of cocoa on a stormy winter’s night. Not everything was the same as the way he’d left it; there were new memories, new emotions, but the AI learned them quickly enough and stored them away for safekeeping, for a day when he would need them to comfort him, a day he hoped would never come.

It was different than Carolina’s mind. Yeah, her’s was also a little dark and damaged but being in her mind felt like his own body, an extension of himself – sure they weren’t actually siblings but when he was in her mind they were like twins. Tucker’s head was filthy and the storage unit in his suit (he didn’t have neural implants for an AI, thank god) was so full of junk that Epsilon felt like he was visiting his friend’s dirty bachelor pad. And he wouldn’t even mention what Caboose’s and Grif’s minds were like. 

No, Wash’s mind was very hospitable.

“How is it?” Wash asked and Epsilon could hear the unspoken question in his mind. _Are you okay?_

The AI unfurled in the wide-open space of Wash’s mind, basked in the warmth and safety of the voice that he connected to and settled himself into a quiet corner where he wouldn’t be too obtrusive. “Pretty spacious in here, Wash. I think we need to get you some more reading material,” Epsilon teased, looking around at the infinite room in Wash’s mind, thinking that he’d never fill it all with a hundred iterations of himself.

Wash scoffed as he headed back through the halls towards the extraction point but there was a shiver down his spine and a thought in a distant corner that Epsilon quietly turned away from. After all, his host deserved _some_ privacy. “Same old…” he heard the man mutter, though Epsilon knew, could feel it in Wash’s very core, that he was happy. And that was enough for now.


End file.
